Friday, August 15, 2014

Using up all kinds of cop equipment

by Tom Sullivan

For a good bit of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I commuted home on Fridays on I-26 in South Carolina and North Carolina. I could kind of gauge the wars' progress by how many low-boys carrying Humvees, up-armored Humvees, and MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected armored troop carriers) passed me on my commute as they headed from their Midwest factories to Joint Base Charleston to be airlifted to the war zones.

Plenty never made it home, I'm sure. But after this week's events in Ferguson MO, I have to wonder where the rest wound up. Chase Madar explains how one MRAP ended up at Ohio State University in case a frat party got out of hand.

That MRAP came, like so much other equipment police departments are stocking up on -- from tactical military vests, assault rifles, and grenade launchers to actual tanks and helicopters -- as a freebie via a Pentagon-organized surplus military equipment program. As it happens, police departments across the country are getting MRAPs like OSU’s, including the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office in Minnesota. It’s received one of 18 such decommissioned military vehicles already being distributed around that state. So has Warren County which, like a number of counties in New York state, some quite rural, is now deploying Afghan War-grade vehicles. (Nationwide, rural counties have received a disproportionate percentage of the billions of dollars worth of surplus military equipment that has gone to the police in these years.)

So lots of that deficit-funded hardware deployed to fight 'em over there so we wouldn't have to fight 'em over here has come home to fight -- for lack of terrorists in places like Ferguson, MO -- whatever "threats" are lying around. Congressman Hank Johnson, D-Ga has proposed legislation to restrict the militarization of neighborhood policing.

It was just typical "cop equipment hanging around the police officer station" that rural Massachusetts police couldn't wait to use up against the notorious litterer, Arlo Guthrie. Now it's state-of-the-art war-fighting machinery. If that's meant to make Americans feel safer, it ain't working.